The use of various materials to stain, enhance or change the natural color of an individual's lips has been known since ancient times. In modern times, lip color change or enhancement is accomplished primarily through the use of pigments and coloring agents incorporated into a hard waxy material. The waxy material/coloring agent combination is typically made available in a stick form and is known in common parlance as lipstick. Although widely used, conventional lipsticks have a number of drawbacks. Conventional lipsticks can be difficult to apply due to their hard waxy nature and have limited wearability, primarily due to the fact that most lipsticks contain a relatively small percentage of pigment. Thus, conventional lipsticks must be reapplied at frequent intervals.
The use of dry powdered lip colors to enhance wearability over that of conventional lipsticks is also known. However, the use of powdered lip color can be inconvenient and time consuming. Moreover, while the use of powdered lip color may enhance wearability over lipsticks to some extent, powdered lip color tends to dry the wearer's lips and to undesirably enhance the appearance of wrinkles.
Cosmetic formulations incorporating silicones (organosiloxanes) have been proposed. Examples of such formulations are disclosed in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 4,699,780 issued Oct. 13, 1987 to Jennings et al.; 4,578,266 issued Mar. 25, 1986 to Tietjen et al.; 4,390,524 issued Jun. 28, 1983 to Nasuno et al.; and, 4,355,046 issued Oct. 19, 1982 to Suess. The foregoing references do not, however, teach the unique formulation of the present invention which provides an improved lip color with superior wearability.